Countering Horsemen with Drakes

Samantha · Post by **Samantha** » December 17th, 2007, 10:30 pm

Recently I have been playing several games as Drakes versus Loyalists with generally good results. However, lately I have been having problems with Horsemen severely limiting my tactical abilities.

My general strategy against loyalists is to recruit a large number of skirmishers and augers. During the night I use my augers to attack any units that are weak to cold or without ranged attacks. I use my skirmishers to finish off retreating units, kill units that the augers didn't finish themselves, ZOC the augers against counterattack, and assassinate mages.

During the day I use my saurian's great speed to retreat out of their reach. If I can't for any reason get completely out of their reach in the day I will retreat to good terrain and use my skirmishers to protect my augers.

The problem that I have been facing is that horsemen have been too limiting of my strategy and I need a good way to counter them. Generally, my opponent, when using horsemen, will advance during the day and beat a retreat at dusk or right before dusk.

At night my opponent will form a solid formation to prevent me from making full use of my skirmishers. He will place his horsemen where they can retaliate if my saurians attack the main formation. If I try to attack the main formation while the horsemen are there the best that I can hope for is a 1 to 1 trade with an auger and most likely risk losing two units if I wish to retaliate because bringing enough firepower to attack the horseman requires that I partially disengage the main force.

During the day horsemen also pose a nuisance as they are fast enough to take pot-shots at saurians while still being within their supporting unit's strike zone for the next turn, resulting in a likely 3-1 bad trade for me.

Any advice on how to counter horsemen would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Glowing Fish · Post by **Glowing Fish** » December 17th, 2007, 11:00 pm

I would say that in this situation, it comes down to a matter of money. If your opponent has multiple horsemen, and a line of units to protect them, then on most maps and most settings, they probably don't have much money for anything else. I would just keep on buying cheap Saurians and perhaps the an Augur or two, and eventually press through with strength of numbers.

Post by **Velensk** » December 17th, 2007, 11:39 pm

I ussualy go with clashers and burners when facing drakes. Clashers rip up any horsment who engage them, very well.

Samantha · Post by **Samantha** » December 18th, 2007, 12:16 am

Thanks everyone for the input.

Glowing Fish, I think you misunderstood how he was using the horsemen, he wasn't protecting them with anything. He just deployed them when he took his nighttime defensive posture seven or eight hexes away from my front line, protecting them by virtue of being out of range yet still capable of lashing out at anything that attacked his main force.

If I attacked the main force his horseman (21g) would kill an auger (16g) or a skirmisher (15g). That puts him 5-6g down. If I fail to retaliate the horseman just strikes again and I'm suddenly at least 10g down. If I do retaliate it usually means pulling significant numbers of saurians away from attacking his main force (especially augers, which I need for his HI) which more often than not means that I'm counterattacked and loose another saurian (again 10-11g down). By this time it's getting toward dawn and am unable to linger.

Thanks for that advice Velensk, I'll try that next time I play against a loyalist. I'm guessing that the burners are used much like Dark Adepts are used with the Undead, right?

IB · Post by IB » December 18th, 2007, 12:30 am

1. Horsemen are 23 gold.
2. Clashers are what you are looking for.

JW · Post by JW » December 18th, 2007, 12:49 am

IB wrote:1. Horsemen are 23 gold.
2. Clashers are what you are looking for.

Clashers kill horsies.

Faello · Post by **Faello** » December 18th, 2007, 2:03 am

At night:
- saurian skirmishers ( spear attacks are good, espescially from high defence hexes )
- saurian augurs magic attacks

During the day:
- clashers ( again spear attacks are awesome and retaliation attack - if you will be able to survive the horseman charge - will beat the crap out of him )
- burners as auxilliary unit ( if you're out of clashers and u need to beat the crap out of horseman, burner multiple fire attack is good for this task also )

Weeksy · Post by **Weeksy** » December 18th, 2007, 3:31 am

if he's got all his units by his horseman, that means he's clumping quite a bit, and a fighter or skirmisher or glider somewhere else can be stealing villages. Make sure that you're using the ranged attacks of skirmishers when handy, that 5-2 damage at night (6-2 v. horsemen) slowly pays off, and doesn't leave your troops wounded.

multilis · Post by **multilis** » December 21st, 2007, 6:33 am

Horseman, cavalry and fencers are loyalists way to deal with described hit and run. The fencers are useful to assasinate your augurs the same way you do his mages with skirmishers.

The strongest drake unit may be the drake fighter. Not as good at many things as specialised forces, but he is reasonably cheap, very mobile, and ok hit, useful to help your sauron hit and run tactics and deal with cavalry. Since saurons resist spears but are prey to swords, cavalry with their reduced cost are sometimes more effective than horseman. Flight+speed often mean drake fighter can heal by stealing enemy villages if he survives (out of range of enemy).

Clasher is tough, good horseman killer as stated by others, weaknesses is he has trouble keeping up on larger map and he can't threaten weak ranged units trying to kill him.

Post by **Doc Paterson** » December 21st, 2007, 2:05 pm

A brief aside:

It seems an awful lot of people have been calling Saurians "Saurons".....

New trend?

multilis · Post by **multilis** » December 21st, 2007, 3:51 pm

Doc Paterson wrote: It seems an awful lot of people have been calling Saurians "Saurons".....

Sorry, on one of the other boards I visit, the media discussions forum seems to be full of Sauron vs Voldemort/Batman/Yoda/etc threads and my brain keeps mixing up the words.

On the bright side, Wesnoth is famous on that board http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=67238

Darth Jordius · Post by **Darth Jordius** » December 21st, 2007, 3:59 pm

I'd suggest not using simply Saurians, all drakes have decent ranged attacks, and horseburgers are great tasting. Though it smells worse than the breath of a dwarf...

multilis · Post by **multilis** » December 21st, 2007, 5:44 pm

I'd suggest not using simply Saurians

Drakes don't have a good counter to spearman... cheap, pierce, better defense, peaks at same time of day so mobillity less useful.

Sorrow · Post by **Sorrow** » December 21st, 2007, 8:27 pm

multilis wrote:
I'd suggest not using simply Saurians
Drakes don't have a good counter to spearman... cheap, pierce, better defense, peaks at same time of day so mobillity less useful.

Burner, Fighter, Clasher, Skirmisher, Augur are all good against the spearmen. As long as luck is not bad.

Mobility has nothing to do with any of that. Drakes are scary because they can quickly attack with every unit on either side of wendlyn channel (even after the changes it still very easy). On the freelands they can attack down the center from both sides with every unit instantly, or attack on either side they choose ridiculously fast. Thats why their mobility is scary.

Martinus · Post by **Martinus** » December 28th, 2007, 4:09 pm

Sorrow wrote: Burner, Fighter, Clasher, Skirmisher, Augur are all good against the spearmen. As long as luck is not bad.

Mobility has nothing to do with any of that. Drakes are scary because they can quickly attack with every unit on either side of wendlyn channel (even after the changes it still very easy). On the freelands they can attack down the center from both sides with every unit instantly, or attack on either side they choose ridiculously fast. Thats why their mobility is scary.

Neither Skirmisher nor Augur are good counter to Spearman with their weak hp, and drakes are simply more expensive. There is no unit to trade for Spearman as he is so cheap, you have to use common sense and rather use ranged attacks to get rid of him. Fighter has a weak ranged and strong melee , Burner and Augur have strong ranged but are rather fragile at melee (Burner can deal quite a lot damage but it dies quickly as well). Clashers are good for blocking spearman, but they're expensive and can receive quite a lot of counter damage (though they're generally tougher and stronger than Spearman)